Memphis Was Supposed to Win 28 Games

The oddsmakers wrote this team off before it played a game. Books set Memphis's win total at 28.5 — among the lowest numbers in the Western Conference — for a franchise that had just traded away Ja Morant and Jaren Jackson Jr. and handed the keys to a rookie.

Five games in, the rookie is dealing. Cameron Boozer's first career triple-double — 18 points, 12 rebounds, 12 assists — powered a 124-103 win at Portland on Thursday night, in a game the Commercial Appeal and theScore both framed the same way: the battle of unbeatens that wasn't supposed to involve Memphis at all. The Grizzlies are 5-0. Portland, 3-0 coming in, is 3-1. The only other unbeaten team left in the league, per Eurohoops' standings, is Houston — also 5-0, and a team that was supposed to be good.

Tied at the half, gone by the fourth

For a half, this was the game it was billed as. The quarters went 25-25 and 33-33 — 58-58 at the break, with Boozer already at 13 points and Deni Avdija leading Portland with 13, according to the Commercial Appeal's live account. Then Memphis detonated it: 33-25 in the third, 33-20 in the fourth, a 66-45 second half on the road, per Sportradar's box score.

Boozer finished 6-of-10 from the field with four three-pointers, and his 18 points shared the team high with Isaiah Stewart's 18 off the bench. Memphis did it with its early-season engine, Ty Jerome, held to 10 points, and despite losing reserve big man Quinten Post to a right ankle injury in the second quarter, the Commercial Appeal reported. Portland shot just 7-for-26 from three, per Sports Illustrated's Trail Blazers report, and Damian Lillard was held to nine points on 3-of-13 shooting. Avdija's game-high 24 points, nine rebounds and seven assists were the Blazers' lone full line.

The rookie's fifth game

It took Boozer five games. NBC Sports noted the No. 3 overall pick needed just five appearances to record his first triple-double, and the Commercial Appeal reported he is the second-youngest player in NBA history to record one. The Duke Basketball Report added the rookie framing: the last rookie to post a triple-double by his fifth game was Lonzo Ball, in 2017-18.

This is the franchise Memphis chose. NBC Sports put it plainly: the Grizzlies have turned the team over to Boozer after moving on from both Jackson Jr. and Morant in separate trades over the last few months. On Thursday, the new face outproduced the old one's whole night before the old one left the floor for good.

Ja's night ended early

The other half of this game was always going to be Morant. This was his first meeting with Memphis since the June trade — reported by the Associated Press at the time as Morant to Portland for Jerami Grant and Kris Murray — ended a seven-year tenure that began with loads of promise and ended, as theScore wrote, in chronic turbulence.

Morant had 14 points on 6-of-14 shooting, with two rebounds and three assists in 23 minutes. Then, in the fourth quarter, with Memphis up 115-93 and 4:01 to play, he left with a left hamstring injury and was ruled out for the night — the Commercial Appeal, theScore, NBC Sports and RotoWire all reported the same exit. RotoWire reported the severity is unclear at this time and listed him as questionable for Portland's Saturday game at Utah until further notice. Nothing beyond that is known, and nothing beyond that is claimed here.

Morant had downplayed the matchup beforehand, theScore reported, and he is averaging 15.8 points through his first four appearances for Portland. The teams don't meet again until February, when they play twice in Memphis.

One win from the record book

The context keeps stacking up. The Commercial Appeal reported this is the first time Memphis has gone undefeated on a road trip of four games or more since 2013 — the Grizzlies swept Golden State, Sacramento, Utah and Portland on this one, after opening the season at home against Utah. And a 5-0 start, the paper noted, puts Memphis one win behind the franchise-best 6-0 start of 2014-15 — a team that went on to win 55 games.

All of it under head coach Tuomas Iisalo, with a roster the market priced like a lottery team. Five games is five games — nobody here is engraving anything — but on Thursday the Grizzlies took Portland's unbeaten start and buried every expectation attached to their own in the same night.

The Sports Desk's read: Saturday is the tell. Sacramento comes to FedExForum (5:00 PM PT), and a win matches the 6-0 start of the best regular-season team in franchise history — with a 19-year-old rookie as its best player and a win total of 28.5 still sitting in the books. Either the number was the story of the season, or Saturday is where the correction starts. — Previously Staff